My Dear, Dear Friends,
My, has it been so long since my buoyant words bobbled and wove 'cross your rapidly dimming eyes? Ignore my mildly antagonistic cheer, brothers, I am sure that there is much dreadfully important money counting to be attended to! But I tease, you old corks! I have long ceased trying to understand what it is about plain gold and common silver that makes grown men (if not ancient, you grey veils!) press their frozen noses to the display glass of wealth like so many Jet-Pack storefronts! But yours is yours, and mine is mine, I suppose (as long as 'mine' isn't up for sale, that is!).
I suppose you're wondering what your romantic fool of a baby brother is writing on (and on!) about these days, no doubt. No doubt stodgy, old William has muttered something to similar effect even just now, while bookish Edward reads this aloud at the Redwood-stump supper table! How I wish I could be there among you, if not only to defend myself! Ruffians.
Well, you'll be glad to know the water pox finally relented this spring. The country home I am in has beautiful arched windows, rib-cage grounded-buttresses and an abundance of healing, humor-equalizing sunlight and sea-air. It's a wonder doctors haven't found a way to turn a profit off it! Though I am positively bobbled you eight haven't found a way first!
Unfortunately, I must curtail this spirited blather (Patience, William!) towards a subject more or less odious to me, but which will, I'm certain, have you lot enthralled: finances. Good medical care, even for something as common and base as early-onset childhood water pox, is by no means free as air or light, and what with the added expense of my growing amount of time spent in an entirely, altogether different wing of the hospital, I am amassing a considerable amount of debt. I am receiving some specialized care. Seems I have contracted some demons, through a means fairly base given my spiritual responsibilities. As you all-too-well know, I am prone to tell stories, and some of this all may have never happened! For all I know I could be a bundle of conscious organic light trapped in a floating space module, or under 24 hour Care-Themed Surveillance somewhere, for God knows why! But I ramble on, don't I?
I am wondering if it not possible at least to pay me for some of my past non-patented intellectual property, being as that our relationship, in my eyes at least, has changed drastically since the release of "Otters of Stratagem". I do hope you agree.
I realize the whole mess of you would rather spend your time reading numbers but I have included a recent addition to my ongoing proposal for the hypothetical video game "Bed Bug Mountain."
Following Mr. _____'s conversation with the Bed Bugs at the foot of the mountain, said Bed Bugs proceed to march single-file down into the valley, collecting satellite debris liberated from orbit by solar winds along the way. A few have recently been inspired by a local gorilla of industry, and in kind, begin re-purposing the debris for an end presumably oppressive.
As the age of man fades, the Bed Bugs hustle to pack up all the alternative-energy billboards, View-Tainment Information and Welcome Centers, trash cans filled with various repurposed knick-knacks; and generally leave the planet in better shape than they found it, without the protestations of developers, fathers hoisting their hundreds of unsolicited hungry mouths onto any planet that will listen, industrialists, pornographers, or people of ambition.
The Earth purrs and shifts it’s weight from one side to the other. In time, the Bed Bugs gingerly place officious looking Redwood-stump signs featuring vaguely, almost condescendingly, Native-American typeset at the entrance to the oceans, the valleys, and the mountains. The suburbs are roped off and preserved as historical sites, by way of cautionary tale. The dead wood mansions of Big Sur are consumed by an expertly-maintained, intentional brush fire. Certain sites are re-named and dedicated to the tireless and inspired efforts of note-worthy, unintentional naturalist Bed Bugs. The Earth’s civil rights are liberated from the mouth-breathing demands of excitable experience consumers in performance fabric. Fields of sage grow uninhibited, far from the grasping, healing hands of the Energy-Industrial Complex. Trees grow monstrous until their nightmares of being alchemized into eco-sleeves or having Sea Otters crucified on them are long forgotten. Nature can hear itself think without the riotous ambiance of millions of horned-up, nitrate and ginseng-addled suitors.
There is no trace of human cancer left hiking in the heaving breast of the Earth. The Hiking Cancer is finally free to live fully submerged in it’s purely thought-based alternate reality, where its' best intentions don’t have disastrously oblivious, far-reaching consequences for approximate free agents. It walks around blathering about its personal universe, slamming into itself constantly in the long, dark night, deeming all collisions miraculous. The Bed Bugs rechristen their rightful home the S.S. National Park and life rejoices anew, no longer having to tell itself that its unfortunate run-in with humanity had any purpose.
